Red is the new Black. China is the new Japan
Luckily for me, today I picked up a copy of Technician for the first time ever. On the front page was a discussion of something that pertains to our discussion of space, particularly the discussion of Infrastructure. In their article on infrastructure, Dourish and Bell comes to three conclusions. I want to discuss the first one and relate it to NC State’s campus. Their first conclusion, the one they say is most important, is that space is organized not just physically, but culturally as well. WE can see that here on our campus with the Freedom of Expression (FOE) tunnel. The FOE tunnel cannot be understood in purely physical terms. Sure it’s a tunnel we walk through to get places on campus, but it’s much more than that. At some point, students made the decision to transform the tunnel into a forum for cultural expression. We can’t understand how the infrastructure of this particular tunnel works without understanding how it works in the University culture.
We can also see in the paper today, how different communities try to define space. After Obama was elected, 4 students wrote hate speech on the walls of the FOE tunnel. They made racists comments and made threats. Now, those students face possible disciplinary action, and the front page of the Technician features a quote from the NC NAACP leader saying, “Hate speech is not free speech.” Uh….. yeah it is. The threats are a different story, but our cultural understanding of how a FOE space works tends to define it as a place where you can express unpopular opinions. Hate speech is undoubtedly awful, but refusing to allow people to express themselves even when they’re being hateful, especially in an FOE tunnel, sets a dangerous precedent. Basically, it interferes with our cultural understanding of that space. Believe me, I’m resisting the urge to rant for a thousand words about someone getting in trouble because of a message in the FOE tunnel.
Moving on, both Dr. Silva and Dourish and Bell discuss how new technologies don’t obliterate space, they make us reencounter our physical spaces. I wrote in an earlier post that I though the interaction between physicality and technology was more interesting than discussions of Second Life or other programs that let the user divorce himself/herself from physical space. No matter how hard we try, we cannot become virtual.
Throughout the semester, our readings have been building to this week’s set of articles. We have read about materiality and networks, mobility, space, hackers, etc. A common theme was that the idea that new technologies will obliterate space is a myth. We still operate in space, and as Silva discusses, the new technologies change that space. We touched on this vein when we discusses GPS and getting lost. GPS changes our understanding of travelling by, in a way, digitizing space. A GPS system contains a digital map of the physical world, and as we travel and the system speaks to us, it is overlaying it’s digital world on our physical space.
The move toward hybrid spaces will only become more pronounced in the coming years. Social networks such as Facebook have shown that people want to connect and stay connected with other people, at least online. It will be interesting to see what the shift away from the virtual and back to the physical will mean for new social networks. What if we have phones that allow us to see exactly where our facebook friends are on a google map? Do we want that physical connection? Silva talks about ubiquitous computer which leads to a kind of constant connection, but would we want a constant physical connection?
However you answer those questions, it’s an interesting area of study. For me, one of the appeals of our new technologies is that they allow me to divorce from physical contact. I like being able to call people rather than meet them face to face, and I like being able to text them even more than I like being able to call people. I’m not a hermit, so that’s obviously not always true, but I wouldn’t be on facebook if it meant my facebook friends could find me in the physical world. I often use facebook as a replacement for physicality, messaging someone to say hi instead of meeting them for lunch. The move from virtual to physical really is a paradigm shift.
Sousveillance…uh…awesome. As we move to the hybrid reality Dr. Silva discusses, we only become easier and easier to watch. Phones with GPS mean phones that are constantly connected to a network that can watch where the phone moves. Someday, corporations and government won’t have to watch us anymore. We will provide them with all the information they need.
So how do we combat this? Do we combat this? Everyone in this class (even David!!!) uses gmail, which we all know actively follows our correspondence. We don’t care though. So do we care about being watched in the physical world? Probably not, though we should. Is sousveillance useful to combat surveillance? I don’t know, though it may be the best bet we have. Also, it makes for one hell of a research design. Imagine how cool that study was to plan. Matt and Kati, you should take your students, put computers, cameras, and screens on them, and send them into the ghettos of DC or the bodegas in the Bronx to see how people react in underprivileged areas to sousveillance. I don’t think it would be hard to get IRB approval for that. And your students will love you. I promise.
“Sousveillance Across Socioeconomic Divides: A Bronx Bodega Case Study”… who’s with me?
Finally, the history of the cell phone. I think the most interesting part of this history (pretty much all the histories we’ve read) are when the market runs face-first into governmental regulation. Cell phone (and TV and Radio) frequencies were heavily regulated by the FCC, which stunted competition and made groups trying to compete go through interminable bureaucracy. As heavy governmental regulation often does, it also led to monopolies.
What happened to Japan? I remember when Japan was the efficient economy that was going to crush the U.S. Well, it never happened, and Japan has seen a much longer period of economic downturn than we have. Hmmmmmm… China is the new Japan. It has a good ring to it.